Regex'ing null bytes

[Jonas Galvez]

Hi,

I'm trying to parse some binary data with regexes. It works well in
the latest Python build, but I need to run this on Python 1.5.2. The
binary data has a pattern like this:

    keyName1\002..(.*)\000.*keyName2\002..(.*)\000
    (I'm using regex syntax to illustrate)

So I wrote the following script:

    def amfKey(str):
        return "%s\002..([^\000]*)" % str

    keys = re.compile(amfKey("key"), re.DOTALL).findall(amfStr)

Works on 2.3.3, but produces the following error on 1.5.2:

    Traceback (innermost last):
       File "test.py", line 26, in ?
         keys = re.compile(amfKey("key"), re.DOTALL).findall(amfStr)
       File "C:\Python152\Lib\re.py", line 79, in compile
         code=pcre_compile(pattern, flags, groupindex)
     TypeError: argument 1: expected string without null bytes, string found

Does anyone know a workaround? The type of binary data I'm trying to
parse is AMF (Action Message Format), Macromedia's proprietary format
for fast communication between the Flash Player and their "Flash
Remoting" servers (ColdFusion/.NET/Java implementations). But there
are opensource "Flash Remoting" implementations in PHP (amfphp.org),
Perl (simonf.com/flap/) and Java (openamf.org) already - I've
started to work on the Python port.

And I wanted to keep this Python 1.5.2-compatible...



Thanks in advance,


=-
Jonas Galvez
jonasgalvez.com/blog
macromedia.com/go/team